Western Canada. Weed whacker.

I mean, there’s also the whole “Netanyahu goes to prison if he doesn’t have a war going on” thing.

Honestly, I’m kinda surprised he waited this long.

Yep, another Boeing mystery crash where everything stopped working at once.

I’m kinda suspicious that the critical moments weren’t actually missing from Jeju Air’s black boxes when they were delivered to the US.

No, it really doesn’t. Assets under management (not owned) 11.5 trillion, while the American stock market alone is worth around 50.

Sooo robber barons are better?

A colour revolution sounds good about now. In reality, I highly doubt it’s going anywhere.

A person with a history of domestic abuse, assault, and armed robbery can still get one legally.

Not my situation, to be clear, lol. Stories like this were a big part of a reason I’ve been wary of a PAL, although I obviously need to reassess that.

In any case I’m a giant history and technology nerd, and muskets are neat.

In several European countries (such as France) firearms DESIGNED prior to 1880 require no permit to buy or own. This means that cowboy movie lovers who own newly made colt SAA revolvers only need to register their guns but no permit needed to buy or own.

TIL! I’ll have to keep that in mind, since I have family that’s moved over there.

If we had a proportional system maybe there would be some kind of libertarian party I could consider. As it is, I’m in a safe riding anyway.

Is that why you guys like throw pillows so much? More hiding places?

Are you sure he has more influence? If you were to rephrase this as “why does Peter Thiel get more media coverage than other billionaires” the answer would be very easy.

IIRC Bernard Arnault (number 5) has his paws on a ton of things in Europe, but you don’t hear about it because he’s just not that much of a nut.

Almost all from non-Western countries, though. Putin isn’t on the list and he has a house that’s worth a billion, just on it’s own. In the West, it’s hard to make a billion dollars without leaving a very traceable footprint.

Their leadership doesn’t even like to hang out in NK. It’s weird, at this point North Korea is basically a resource colony, just with oppressors who are (nominally) domestic instead of the European inbreds we usually associate with that.

That is to say, the nukes exist to protect the criminal enterprise, and there’s no universe where the elites would care enough about anything other than comfort and covering their ass to do a first strike.

Europe has about had it. I dunno, maybe Germany is still too guilty to not help. The US is a different beast, although they’re also in a phase where they’re bad at everything and don’t want to put their own stuff at risk.

I was going to do a deep dive into the legislation to figure out WTF I was remembering here, but it’s been kicking around my inbox for a full month now, so I think I have to give up on that.

I don’t think I ever laid eyes on one myself, but I did talk to shooting buddies who bought a restricted and then regretted it. I guess it’s possible they were just exaggerating, but there definitely was something about having to call movements in.

The legislation we have here does make no sense, although that can cut both ways if you want to own something weird. I never got the PAL myself but I’ve thought about getting a specific kind of blackpowder musket that would be banned in the 'states.

There’s both hype, and anti-hype.

It will do some jobs humans do now, but not others on any clear timeline. And the role of chessmaster was taken by computers over a decade ago.

I mean, it can do a little logic. But only as long as it helps it gossip.

Dwarf Fortress. That’s where my mild obsession with technological bootstrapping and self-sufficiency started.

Although I think I was more of a tween or teen when I discovered it. If I needed to be an actual child, it’s harder, because Mario Kart and JumpStart influenced nothing. Probably RuneScape; it’s fuzzy, but I think that was my first taste of internet culture.

Almost all people would agree that’s not the same thing as the subjective experience of pain, though. By that measure a smoke detector is actually screaming when it’s power is interrupted.

Plants don’t have organs for movement or information processing, because those are too energy intensive and wouldn’t help much. Their other tissues respond to stimuli, but the data rate is orders of magnitude slower than an animal in the same environment.

I’m not sure why these signals would need to reach any significant complexity, but if they did it would be a truly alien mind that expands with the plant’s growth about as fast as it thinks. And it’s kind of beside the point. Stealing from [email protected]:

Plants have feelings too
No, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…

Prove it. They do not have any sound-producing organs, nor any structured nervous system to coordinate a non-hormonal response to anything.

Ah, technically correct, the best kind.

Okay, equivalent in unpleasantness to prolonged torture.

Depends massively on the farm and the practices.

Being a cow on a pasture looks okay most of the time. Factory farms should not exist.